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Hi, well I did load a couple more pictures into the photobucket site and you can see a bit more of some of the crazy Ideas. Take a look at http://photobucket.com/albums/a297/Habedere
and you can see why the hand truck will not work for me. The stands are anchored in about two feet of concrete and the rest is mostly scrap steel.
The sticky slide gets coated with FGMO. In hot or humid weather it stays open, that is, I take it out completely. Take care and have fun

Good morning Jon, I had found the lift in our local store on display with the number SKU-1647.
At the time they did not have one in the warehouse and so I snooped around the Harbor Freight internet site and that thing told me that the number was not in the catalog or was being discontinued. That worried me. On the next Monday I called them and they had just received a shipment of five that morning. I bought mine the next day. The people in the store did not think that it was being discontinued. Take care and have fun.

Hi Jon, I just snooped around again on the Harborfreight site. I did find it after some searching under the number 01647-4VGA. Try that and see what you think. Obviously I was lucky and caught our store with a sale price of $59.95.
I hope that helps.

I am a novice so my question may not make sense, but won't the noise of the garden tractor agitate the bees? As an aside, I admire your ingenuity and perseverence. I have the latter, but totally lack the former.

Hi RonS et al, well like I said before, the proof is in the pudding. However, I use this tractor for mowing and I mowed directly across the front of our hives. The trick is with this tractor you have to keep the hives on the right, the left side has the exhaust. For the lifting operation the tractor does not need engine power so things will be quiet. I will let you all know how things will go. My main interest is the status of the brood boxes later in the year to check on the amount of brood and honey for their winter survival. Of course if I see something in the meantime, this rig will jump into action. Right now we have still a good nectar flow and today I found them bringing in nice white pollen so I don't want to disturb them. I will let you all know what improvements, if any, I will make after an actual use of the lift. Take care and have fun.

Hi, well today I started on another project that has been a burr under my saddle for quite some time. So, in order to swat two flies at once, I pulled the VW engine out that I want to rebuild and lifted it with my hive lift on the engine stand. It did it! I am sure that the engine has quite a bit more weight than a full deep super and so I think I have the pudding proof. See http://www.photobucket.com/albums/a297/Habedere Take care and have fun.